


city lights, city nights (or, better red than dead!)

by Esmenet



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Animated), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cities, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 08:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3481196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmenet/pseuds/Esmenet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally West starts his superhero career in Gotham City. It's ... different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	city lights, city nights (or, better red than dead!)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dovey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovey/gifts).



> timeline/canon notes: Wally is his JL/JLU self, Jason is nebulous comics continuity Robin!Jason, and their age gap is about the same as the one in Young Justice.

There are rumours, in Gotham. Something strange is happening.

Last week five people were found by the fire department sitting across the street from their burning home, two of them still asleep. Three nights ago the Riddler was found on the police station’s doorstep, wearing a sign that said ARREST THIS MAN. There are growing stories of impossible escapes, people caught in the middle of gunfights suddenly finding themselves blocks away, head-on car collisions averted, the Joker’s intended victims whisked to safety before his very eyes.

Angels, they say. Magic. Gotham City has always been a strange place; maybe, for once, it’s trying to help its people instead of damn them. The citizens of Gotham want to believe, maybe for the first time in their lives, that their city loves them.

Batman is more suspicious.

“Jason, take a look at these camera stills. Notice anything?”

Empty street, empty street, street with a few people on it, the exterior of a jewelry store, the empty steps of the GCPD. All sites of so-called ‘Gotham Miracles’, nothing they haven’t been looking at for the past few days.

There’s nothing immediately out of place, either. But Bruce is asking him so there’s gotta be _something_. He goes through them slowly, looking at each one carefully; then again, searching for any overall pattern. It’s only when he flicks through them at speed that it shows up clearly.

“The red blur thing, right?”

Bruce settles back into his chair a little more, relieved. “Yes. The digital color tests didn’t show anything out of place; I thought I might have been imagining it.

“Whatever’s causing this, it’s not staying completely out of sight of cameras. Maybe it can’t. We’ll set up some high-resolution cameras in the West End tonight, see if we can catch anything.”

He shouldn’t be taking Jason out on a school night, but this won’t take long.

—

Jason stops by Crime Alley sometimes, to see if all the buildings have fallen down yet. Some afternoons he climbs up one that’s not too shaky and looks out over the town, all the crumbling theatres and condemned apartment buildings. He got beat up behind that dumpster for money he didn’t have; that alley over there is where Bruce’s parents were killed.

Ah, Gotham. Never change. But today he must be more tired than he thought, because he steps out onto a fire escape and _oh_ , wrong move. Stupid, to come out here with nothing but day clothes; stupider still to mistake the crumbling north fire escape for the secure south. He grapples for a handhold, foothold — hell, a teeth-hold would do — but there’s nothing. Jason falls.

He must have screamed.

“Hey! Careful,” Jason hears, while he’s busy processing that he’s not a flesh pancake. Dimly, he registers being set down on someone’s front stairs — and out of the corner of his eye, a flash of red.

Jason clutches the concrete, eyes wide and straining for the afterimage of that red blur. He almost, _almost_ saw the face…

Look, he never believed for a second that Gotham City would help anyone. Gotham’s worse than rotten; she’s evil all the way down to bedrock. There’s no-one in this city who knows that better than Jason Todd. Gotham’s the last thing on earth who would ever look out for her people…but maybe, just maybe, someone else is.


End file.
